Reach Unveils Major Expansion Initiative

Reach Separations is set to double laboratory space at its UK-based facility as a result of increased demand for its specialist purification services.

The expansion will see significant investment in analytical equipment and purification systems and at the company’s headquarters located at BioCity in Nottingham.

Growth for the purification expert is being driven by increased demand for its chromatography capabilities from the drug discovery, contract research and agrochemical sectors across Europe.

With a focus on providing purification with a rapid turnaround time to ensure the material is in back in the hands of the chemist quickly, Reach Separations has built a reputation for being one of the most sophisticated chromatography purification providers in the contract services space.

The company’s technical group is led by director Phil Abbott, who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 20 years, including several years at AstraZeneca as a Separation Science Group Leader.  He said: “This venture is a major milestone for our organisation and essentially enables us to do more of what we’ve already been doing over the last few years, but at even greater speed for even more customers.

“Our clients typically require purified materials as quickly as possible. Our expanded resource and capacity will allow us to work at increased speed to help reduce screen time and get compounds back to clients even quicker, helping meet tight deadlines.

“The upsurge in demand we have experienced from companies developing new compounds shows no sign of slowing down so its important that we are proactive about expansion and ready to meet the needs of new and existing clients.”

The company’s accelerated growth has also been bolstered by a thriving strategic alliance with Evotec, which has seen the company support the CRO in helping hit client deadlines on a consistent basis. After becoming a technology partner in 2014, Reach Separations has since provided ongoing purification, analytical and small molecule chromatography to aid Evotec’s pharmaceutical and biotech clients worldwide.

Supporting small molecule synthesis requirements, the company supports clients in the fields of chiral, reverse phase and normal phase chromatography from mg scale to in excess of 500 g.

“Adding a UPC2, QDa Mass spectrometry detector, HClass UPLC, rotary evaporators and two preparative SFCs will massively enhance our offering to the market. “For instance, the new equipment will allow us to use SFC with mass spectrometry, which is a very rare technique to see in the sector so is an exciting capability addition,” added Mr Abbott.


Reach Separations recently joined a UK-led CRO mission to Scandinavia to present how collaborative outsourcing can help drug development companies overcome R&D scientific challenges.